


What thou and I did, till we loved

by middlemarch



Series: Mercy March [2]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Childbirth, F/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 19:44:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6821554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The birth of a child transforms all aspects of a marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

What had happened to her? Mary could not help but ask herself. She sat upright in their bed, the pillows plumped full behind her, the lamp turned low on the table. Jed was downstairs yet, attending to some papers in his study and she waited for him. Daniel had been tucked in his crib, his thumb firmly planted in his mouth, his breaths even and calm. Her fingers pleated first the linen sheet, then the thin muslin of her nightdress; her hair had been brushed out, a silky dark cloud of curls held back only by combs above her temples. Jed preferred her hair down, but he liked to have a hand in its undoing, unravelling the braids, his fingers running through from her crown to where the curls ended at the small of her back. She had prepared everything as she would have before and yet, it was not the same.

She had greeted him at the door alone, Daniel under Patty’s watchful eye, greatly entertained by the shaking of a rattle or Patty’s treble voice piping out a nursery rhyme. She had set Jed’s leather satchel down and helped him off with his overcoat, then he’d taken her in his arms to kiss her lightly. She had whispered to him, “Dr. Foster, I give you leave,” and hoped he would take her meaning, trying to inject her suggestion into the tone of her voice, but he had pulled away and looked at her questioningly. So she had gone again into his arms, but had stroked her hand down his chest, allowing her hand to graze the top of his thigh, to linger for a moment near his groin, and said again, “Jedediah, I give you leave,” and smiled at him, her former bold smile she felt was now part of a Venetian Columbina mask she wore. Her unease had been covered by the jolt of his response, his own smile brilliant, his eyes bright and lustful. The rest of the evening had been a strange experience for her, their usual pleasant round of conversation and a good meal, the time spent playing with Daniel before readying him for the night, nursing him in the rocking chair beside his white crib, but always with the undercurrent of anticipation, Jed’s joyful desire and her own unexpectedly muted response.

Where had forthright Mary Phinney, even bold Mary Foster, where had she gone? She had never felt before as she did now; she had come to her marriage-bed with Gustav a virgin, but eager and unafraid. He had been gentle and patient and glad of her easy pleasure. Her body had been a source of unknown delights and she praised God and nature and her husband for the creation and further revelation. Before they had wed, she and Jedediah had struggled through an uncertain world of concealed desire and love, unable to fully express themselves, but both so willing. She had not been shy when she was in his arms, not ashamed of her love for him, but only troubled how its expression was destructive to their mutual sense of honor. After their marriage and before Daniel’s birth, they had shared themselves without reserve, their connubial lust audacious and vocal; their bedroom rang with Jed’s shouts and her cries in equal measure. Conceiving Daniel had been delight heaped on delight, an overwhelming excess of joy when Mary announced she was with child; that was the night both recalled, not whichever regular gleeful midnight had led to conception.

Now, Mary herself was newly conceived, she thought. She was altered and she could not grasp her new margins, had not the ability to step back and observe herself. In part, this was due to the demands of the baby—his needs were immediate, basic and undeniable. When Daniel cried for her, her body responded even before she could think to reach out her hand to him. Her breasts filled with milk, her heart leapt until he was in her arms again, suckling, and a wash of calm fell over her as well. Even when his need was to be cleaned of regurgitated milk or the soft baby shit that smelled to her of buttermilk, to be played with or simply just held against her, her breath and heart pacing his again, she could not delay. She was present in her body in a way she had hardly been before. It was as if some aspect of herself had never left the labor of his birth. Then she had felt the contractions griping, then rending her, and marveled that in the midst of it, her hands, her calves and feet, so much of her, were all as before while the core of her being was reconfigured by forces she could only just exist within. She had felt herself an animal, part of nature, in a way she had not truly recognized since she was a young child playing in the brook or the dappled woods. She had reveled in it but now, she felt she had lost her place. She could not make out the connection between her earlier incarnation and the Mary Foster she awoke to now.

The voice of her mother had receded, as Margaret March had promised, and they had made plans instead for young Jo to visit in the fall when there was a lecture series that she might attend from the security of the Foster home. She still corresponded with Margaret and took to heart the wisdom and kindliness, the dash of dry humor, that arrived every week, the missives carefully stored in a marquetry box like love-letters, Jed joked. Margaret answered her questions and often offered advice before Mary had known she had the need for it, as she imagined her own mother might have done. She did not ask these questions about her physical self and she did not expect much beyond what Margaret had already said, “Trust yourself and your husband, trust in the depth of the love you bear for each other. God has designed us to change but he has given us helpmeets to weather the storm that transforms us, this is why he made not Adam alone, but Eve as well; not Eve alone, but Adam too.” 

Mary supposed her body had healed. She had not wanted to return to the midwife again and they had met only briefly; she had answered the few questions asked and the midwife had pronounced her ready to resume her wifely duties. That had been a week ago and she could no longer delay. She knew Jed had been uncommonly patient but she was aware he still hungered for her, was trying to content himself with the kisses and caresses she offered but which were not enough. They had not made love since shortly before Daniel’s birth, when she became so awkward and uncomfortable that he had simply laughed at her ruefully when she reached out for him and said, “Oh, Molly, my dear, I think we must wait now—I know this will give you so little joy and for me, there is none without yours. Let me stroke your hair or rub your sore back and by-and-by, we will resume our country pleasures after the baby has come and you are well again.” She gathered that time had come, that she was well, though she could not say that was how she felt, lying in their bed, waiting for his step upon the stair. 

She felt distant from her womanly body in a way foreign to her, unsure and apprehensive about how it might respond or behave as wife, not mother. She had nursed Daniel for a long time to empty her breasts, which were now soft but still fuller than before, the nipples a darker rose, blue veins tracing her fair skin. She did not worry, at least, that Jed himself would be much distressed by the softness of her belly, the extra curve at her hip and buttock. She did wonder how it would go—between her legs, she still felt changed, could hardly imagine the return of the wonderful, ripe, warm wanting Jed had drawn from her so effortlessly before. She breathed slowly and tried to remember what Margaret had written, of trust and love, how Adam had helped Eve, and the endless variety and form Jed found to show her his abiding affection. She thought of him, his dark eyes and clever hands, the trim length and breadth of him, the softness of his beard against her breasts and thighs, and she felt a flicker within her but was frustrated to also feel a rising tide of tears in her throat. 

She had never cried easily, had gone nearly the entire War weeping only for the disserter, the death of a seventeen year old private from Vermont with the bluest eyes she had ever seen, and Appomattox Courthouse, when the end was finally brought home. And she had cried when Lincoln was killed, as they all had cried, a communal grief, less personal than the death of the Vermonter. Now, she cried constantly it seemed, small tears, sharp ones. They overflowed with the least provocation, for fear or sadness or joy, sometimes briefly and sometimes taking a much longer time to her to sob and then settle, a feeling like the washed air after rain suffusing her. She thought she might cry when Jed first touched her with intent, or brought her to her climax, or as she fell asleep in his arms, the scent of his sweat again rubbed into her skin. He would not like that, would worry and fret, and she must anticipate an explanation that was true at least in part.

And now, after this drawn-out wait but also suddenly, he was on the threshold, gave a quick, startled laugh at his first sight of her, “Molly! I hadn’t thought—You look like a timid bride awaiting her ogre of a husband, or a virgin sacrifice ready for the final act,” he paused, reading her face, and changed his tone, “Sweetheart, are you sure? There is no urgency, I can wait, I am happy just to hold you tonight, or read to you as we used to do. Truly—we only need do what you want,” he said, undressing a little more slowly, vest and cravat placed more carefully on the chair, then unbuttoning his white shirt, starting with the cuffs.

“I do want to, Jed. And we must make a beginning again sometime and the midwife said there was no impediment, unless you do not want…” here she trailed off, uncertain in a way she had not been before. Then, she had been entirely confident in her effect on him, could feel the desire he had for her in his touch, his tone of voice, even the pace of his breathing. She began to fiddle with a long lock of hair that hung over her shoulder when he pulled his braces down, then came over to sit beside her on the bed.

“Oh Molly! You doubt me? I have longed for you, so many nights as we lay in this bed together, and at the breakfast table, as you waved me goodbye at our front door, I wished only to run back to you and kiss you.” He laid his mouth upon hers, softly at first, then with more intensity, parting her lips and tasting her. His left hand stole to her waist, the heat of him immediate through the nightdress, and he moved his hand upwards to gently cup her breast. She gasped and he laughed, a wicked, dirty laugh, into her mouth, “Oh, I want, Molly Foster.”

He stood again then and undressed more rapidly, first the shirt dropped to the oak floor, then his shoes, trousers. He ducked into the small alcove off their bedroom where they kept the pitcher and basin; she heard him splashing about quietly, then he came back into the room and turned down the lamp beside the bed. Within moments, moonlight alone lit them, the white of the coverlet, and lay softly on the Turkey rug whose colors had been subtly dimmed. He pulled back the covers and slipped in the bed beside her. He lay close next to her and took her in his arms. He put his mouth close to her ear and whispered, “So lovely! This is—oh! You feel so good, my beautiful girl!” And he ran his hands along her, first touching her ribs and then splaying a hand over her hip, then her thigh, all the while kissing her throat, her cheeks, the tender skin under her jaw. It was so familiar, he was so beloved, and yet the fire that he had usually quickened so fierce and bright was slow to burn, only embers. She turned to him, to meet his kiss with her own and the familiar taste of him, coupled with the feel of his hands on her body, engendered a low hum throughout her. She thought perhaps if she kept kissing him, long, slow kisses as if she would drink him down, if she concentrated on the heat of his grasp on her hip, his hand moving to her bottom, she would find the hum becoming the accustomed song within her. He appeared to notice little difference, stroking her and holding her to him with increasing strength; he had flung the combs from her hair to the floor where they clattered dully and his breath was in her hair, the curls spilling over them both, darker than the dark night. She felt his cock hard between them, glad she might rouse him so easily but with a creeping dread at her lack of response.

He murmured, “Let me take this off?” and drew the nightdress up from its hem, which had already tangled around her knees. She raised her arms to help him remove it and he tossed it to the ground, falling back upon her bare skin with renewed vigor. Now she felt his mouth, open and wet, searing along her own warm skin. He licked at her clavicle and the hollow at the base of her throat. His bare chest was pressed against her and she felt the tickle and then the rub of the curls on his own chest against her sensitive breasts. It was too much. She became tense and pulled back a little, but he continued to caress her, though by some unspoken agreement, he moved to kiss her rounded belly and did not try to suckle; the scent of the sweet milk she made for Daniel still lingered around her nipples. He did take her breasts in his hands and made a soft exclamation, “Oh! Molly, you are exquisite!” as he felt them and she very clearly prayed within her mind that the milk would not rush in at his touch, not soak them both. She felt herself turning colder, her muscles stiffer and less pliable, less aware of her body’s sensations and becoming tangled in the anxious reflections of her mind. She was not growing wet for him, though she felt his hands begin to play at her thighs, little quick strokes ever closer to her quim. He moved over her then, his strong man’s body covering hers and he jostled her a little, his body asking hers to let him rest in the cradle of her hips. He lowered his face to hers and said softly, “Open your legs for me, my Molly. I want you, love--”

So she did and she tried, she let her legs fall apart and he moved swiftly between then as she wrapped her arms around his sturdy shoulder, palms flat on his back. She buried her face in his neck, now damp with sweat, and pressed her cheek against the place where his pulse beat so strong. She hoped—perhaps she was wrong, it would be as it was before, not merry this time, but with a passion serious and dedicated.

It was a measure of his attention to her that he realized, upon his second thrust, even surrounded by her heat for the first time in months, that something was wrong. She had tensed when he entered her first but it was the second stroke when she cried out, just a little, and turned her face from him. Never before had intimacy with him had this sense of intrusion. His cock was still in her, feeling harder and thicker than she recalled, when he looked down at her, the tears streaking her temples and asked, “Molly, what is it? What is wrong, my darling? Oh, what is it?” She had bitten her lip and shaken her head a little and said, “Just go on,” and had lain very still, anticipating his next movement. But he said, now a little frantic, “Oh, please, Molly, love—what is it, what have I done?” and pulled away from her, but even that was not easy; she felt him dragged against her, an unpleasant burn inside her in his wake.

She opened her eyes then and looked at him, his brow wrinkled and his whole face so distressed. She felt a pang then at realizing she had caused this, introduced this darkness into what had been only light and joyful and she wanted so much to fix it. She said, “It is nothing, nothing at all… please, I want you to, to go on,” but now he was on his side, one hand balanced against her belly and he shook his head at her.

“No, Molly. It is not nothing, I can tell that from your face, from the feel of you in my arms, around me. Tell me!” he said, trying to be firm to cover his fear.

“Truly, Jedediah, just, please—it has been so long, you deserve it, you have had to wait too long already--” she began, but he interrupted her, suddenly the fierce, angry Jed she had not seen in so long, since those early days at Mansion House.

“Deserve it? Do you think this, us, together-- this is something for me to just take?” he exclaimed.

“But it is your due and I have made you wait so long, too long, it is not fair! I know that, that you want it, what you want,” she tried but he had only grown more incensed.

“Christ, Mary! I only want you—your heart and your pleasure! Have I not told you that, again and again? Do you think—am I an animal rutting, am I only looking for a hole to shove my cock in, is that what you think? I married you, not your cunt! I won’t do this again, I can’t—I’ll not! Oh Mary, do you not want—Christ!” he stormed and though he spoke to her so obscenely, she knew he was not trying to wound her with his words, that he was overcome and this moved her. She felt hurt that she had failed and in failing, had hurt him so badly. He had now moved away from her, sat upright with his knees drawn up, one hand over his eyes. Tears spilled from her eyes but she dashed them away and drawing the sheet along with her, she sidled next to him, laid her hand lightly against his heart.

“Jedediah? Please—I’m sorry, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have… Love, I thought I was being unfair to you, but I never wanted you to feel so—I love you and I thought I must, must let you,” she started, pausing when he dropped the hand covering his face and placed it atop hers on his chest.

“Let me? God damn it, Mary! Did you mean to lie there and let me have you like a, like a whore? You are my wife! Christ! What have I done that you would think that, that I would treat you so? It would be—monstrous, vile. I don’t understand what I have done, what I have said, that would… that would make you feel you must, that you were only… under an obligation to me.” He had begun infuriated and, she thought, horrified, but as he spoke, she heard the insidious creep of the self-loathing he was prone to, even now, in his tone and his words.

“Mary, I must apologize to you. I—what I said was unspeakable,” and here his voice broke for a moment, “But you must see, to go on like that, with you like that—Oh, Mary! It is wrong, I would be wrong, no matter what you say. I will not take you, treat you so-- you are my dearest girl, my wife! I cannot!” He drew a deep breath, exhaled it. “I cannot be that man again,” he finished.

Mary looked up at him, set a palm against his cheek. She felt the tears on his face and she thought of what he had said, twice now.

“What do you mean, ‘again,’ I do not understand—you will not be that man again?” she asked, drawing a bit closer, letting the sheet fall from her hand. It still fell modestly to cover her breasts, but dipped behind, her back bare to the night.

“Before, with Eliza, it was, it was not good, it was never good between us. I thought I could make her… enjoy our intimacies, that she was only shy and unaware, and I would teach her, be so gentle and find out how to please her-- but it never changed. I think, now, it was, she never found a way to love me but I couldn’t see that then. She would lie in my arms and turn her face from me after the first few months and when I tried to ask her, she would not talk. Once she said, ‘I will do my duty, can’t you leave it at that?’ and I tried so to find a way to reach her, some embrace she would accept, might welcome. I did not want our love-making to be a duty, a chore she undertook and resented. She would just lie there as we were together and I was entirely alone. I tried… but nothing ever worked, she never wanted me,” he looked away, “I felt more and more a monster every time I lay with her, trying to rouse her-- though she rarely said no and I never… went on, if she demurred. I hadn’t touched her in over a year when you first met me,” Jed admitted, the shame of it in his voice.

Mary regarded him, sitting in their bed. She thought of how quick and persistent he was in trying to right things for others, even when it was hopeless, of how he had faced his own hopelessness with the needle. She had had milder woes, more easily managed—the loss of her parents and her husband, the deaths of soldiers, but through it she had been able to keep the flame at her center bright as he had not. Her losses had been great but simple—she had been well-loved by her parents and her husband, her patients had looked to her with their thanks in their eyes. She had been abandoned only because the ones she cared for had no choice but to leave her. His parents, his brother, his wife—even his some of his countrymen-- had all eagerly rejected him for his convictions, his desires, his loves. His defense of the Union within and outside of the hospital when they had first met made sense to her anew; the ideals of his country were what he had left to buoy him, his patriotism and medicine, and he had joined them at Mansion House. What a thorn she must have been to him with her challenges!

Her struggle now was to coalesce her several selves; she had felt the failure, unable to understand herself, how she might feel herself both his wife and Daniel’s mother and still young Mary from the brook and the dappled wood. Jedediah had had to begin again with her—now a beloved husband, a devoted father, no longer the son and brother excluded, the addict craving the needle. Moments when he was thrown back to his past were never a comfort, only shook him and left him raw and injured. She owned she not thought much of how it would be for him in Boston, the Marylander accepted grudgingly for at least he had stood with the Union. As always, he was most comfortable in medicine, where he was expert and respected among his true peers; she could see it on his face as he left for the hospital, his confident and jovial air when Dr. Harris came to dinner, or when he talked aloud, impatiently writing a response to the latest neurological paper he disagreed with. She did not see that Jed at church or when they went out to call on the Abbotts. Then he was more reserved, a colder version of the man she had met in Alexandria; he retreated into the formalities of his youth or sometimes the regulation of the officer. If only she had listened more to Margaret, had sooner realized Jed’s own fractured self and thought less of her own, how they might have helped each other!

“Jedediah, look at me. I still want you, with all my heart—I have been confused, lost within myself, but I have not asked for your help as I should have. I had hoped everything would be resolved after I spoke to you just the once. I have been given good advice but I hardly took it. Like a child, I wanted things to be easy, simple, but they are not, are they?” She paused, thought how best to say it. “We were able to pretend until Daniel was born, pretend that everything was just as it should be since we married and moved here. But the War is still with us, and what came before-- Gustav and Eliza, your mother and mine—we carry all those losses and we cannot ignore them. But now Daniel is here and we must be Mamma and Papa while we still so newly just you and I, Dr. and Mrs. Foster. I love you—with all my heart and soul, and I have promised to keep doing so—an easy promise for me. I think—I think we may help each other more than we have done-- if I had only spoken tonight instead of lying there and wishing to be other than I am, wishing to be only as I was when I came to you your new bride, only to be with you within those limits… I acted tonight from fear and I did not trust you enough,” she said. She saw he was listening to her, she the object of his full attention; he was not being distracted by his own corrosive thoughts.

“Oh, Molly! How wise you are! But you must stop blaming yourself—I won’t have it. How you see through to the heart of the matter, how you see through me! I am so blessed with you, your endless ferreting out the truth of things, worrying at it till you have got it right, but so sweet to me, so loving. I have been a child too, willing to accept whatever you give me and only just enjoying the gift of it. I have not thought enough of the tender giver. I-I, I have never had this before, I don’t always know what to do with it, don’t recognize how I should respond. I sound like a fool,” he shrugged a little at himself as she shook her head, no, at him. “I should have asked you more tonight—I should not have just tried to make love to you as if nothing had happened-- when everything has happened. I promise you, Molly, I will do better, we may do better.” 

She nodded and he held her to him again and offered her a kiss upon her mouth. He murmured, “Are you tired, sweetheart? I want so much to hold you in my arms and just sleep now.” She nestled beside him and felt his arm around her, whispered, “Sleep now, sleep and we will talk again in the morning.” She closed her eyes and let the sound of his breaths lull her. It would be just an hour or two until Daniel woke to nurse but now she could rest. Jed already dreamed beside her and in repose, she saw his youth and age both mixed upon his face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Curiosity and reconciliation.

The clock in the hallway had chimed three as she walked back to their bedroom. Daniel was content again after nursing, had slipped easily to sleep and barely stirred as she laid him down in his crib. The air was cooler now against her skin, the muslin gown seeming to float around her, her hair loosely tied back with a scrap of pink silk ribbon left from retrimming her Sunday bonnet. She was surprised to find the lamp lit again, the bed bathed in its dull gold, and Jed sitting up again in the bed. His eyes looked tired and his hands rested on the coverlet where it covered him. She saw the grey at his temples and scattered throughout his beard, glinting a little in the lamplight.

“Is he down again? I only heard the faintest squawk, then you were gone so quickly and it has been quiet since,” he said.

“Yes, he was hungry but it was an easy feed, he only wanted to nurse and then sleep again, not to play with Mamma like he did all those nights the last few weeks,” she replied, slipping into the bed again, appreciating the warmth beneath the linens.

“He has a very lovable Mamma,” Jed offered, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. “Molly, we needn’t talk about this tonight if you don’t wish to—but I lay here, thinking of you while you were in with Daniel, and I wondered—why did you say you must ‘let me’ make love to you?”

“I thought I’d explained this, I’m sorry I put it badly,” she began but he interjected.

“No, I mean to say, before, before Daniel was born, you always seemed so eager for our love-making-- so responsive. It seemed as if I couldn’t touch you but to give you delight and when we tried that night, you did not seem the same. You did not seem to… to want as you had before. I wondered why,” he repeated.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what has changed exactly, but when you touched me, I felt all the same love for you, but my body did not, would not do as I wanted, what I expected,” she replied.

“But you said you were recovered, the midwife said so. Has aught been troubling you then?” he asked. He knew her labor had been long and hard, even for a first birth; Daniel was a big baby and had torn her in the final flurry of crowning. The midwife had explained she might take a bit longer to heal but had told her not to worry, to only think of the healthy baby, so pink and plump.

“Well, the midwife said I was fine, I should just be grateful you were so kind and had not urged me to resume my wifely duties. She said I would heal by-and-by and she hoped it would some time before she came to call on me again. I know it is hard if the babies come too close. But Daniel is three months old, I thought we should just make a beginning again,” she said. 

“Did she say anything else?” Jed asked, his tone the curious clinician’s. It was very rare yet for a physician to attend a childbirth; even to perform the surgery Jed had to save Aurelia was uncommon, another mark of his advanced training from Paris. He’d had little to do with any midwives and Mrs. Ballard had been politely disinterested in meeting with him or doing anything other than exchanging pleasantries, until she delivered Daniel; that night, she had sent him to fetch things until she saw it was not helping, then ordered him to his study to smoke or otherwise occupy himself until she sent Patty to him with news of Mary and his child. He had given her double her usual fee when Mary was safely delivered and had babbled thanks at her until she took pity on him and patted his forearm and said, “Dr. Foster, I think Mrs. Foster could do with your attention now.”

“She asked if I still bled and if I could pass urine and stool easily. She asked if Daniel was nursing well and if the pangs when I fed him had passed. I told her what she expected and I supposed that was enough. She said I might talk with my mother or my sister, but I didn’t like to say I couldn’t. Perhaps if Margaret lived near, or if Caroline came to visit, I might ask them, but I cannot imagine writing a letter so,” she responded.

“Oh, Molly! I wish Caroline had not moved to Chicago. I know you miss her very much. She would have been such a comfort to you now. I wonder, if you and I, together, we might discover what it is you need now,” he picked up her hand then and slowly stroked the base of her thumb, traced the fine bones of her wrist, “Your body is such a magnificent mystery—when I think about how Daniel came to be, what you are capable of, and now to see you alone able to feed him, to watch him grow so big, such a beautiful, healthy baby—and you are able to meet his every need from your own body—it’s wondrous. I can hardly grasp why men don’t simply fall at women’s feet to worship, the immense, secret power you have within you…”

“I think you sound like a pagan, now, or the ancients, with one of their goddesses, Juno or Egyptian Isis perhaps. Shall you build me a temple then and recruit handmaidens?” she laughed, enjoying this enthusiastic Jed, relieved to see the encounter from earlier in the week had not created some fundamental, unbreachable schism between them.

“If that is what you want, I suppose. Perhaps I alone might worship at your golden shrine,” he said, clearly tickled now. She smiled at him again.

“What did you mean, we might discover what I need?” she asked, turning toward him.

“I thought perhaps we might find together what you enjoy, what you need at this moment—what we did, what we tried to do, didn’t satisfy you at all. How can I have imagined your body could change in so many ways, yet remain exactly the same in its requirements for intimacy? I think, it was not just that you didn’t care for it, it hurt you, didn’t it?” he replied. She nodded a yes, reluctant to even talk about the pain of their last encounter, sure he would turn on himself and unwilling to lose the easy communion they shared now. She looked at him and saw he was looking back at her with his same bright, inquisitive gaze, remained focused on her and had not begun to castigate himself.

“Molly, may I try to touch you and see if I can bring you your pleasure again? I would only use my hands, I needn’t be inside you tonight,” he asked, tentatively. She thought he wanted her to hear that she might say no, that he would make no demand on her that exceeded what she could tolerate. Again, she nodded, the mood about them delicate. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, then said in a husky voice, “License my roving hands, and let them go/ Before, behind, between, above, below/ Oh my America!” She drew him back to her then and kissed her smile into his mouth, then felt a small, certain thrill as he took her lower lip between his teeth and nipped at at before he set to kissing her again, more deeply. 

He paused and reached over to the table beside the bed. She thought he meant to turn down the lamp, but he did not, only fumbled among the objects she kept there. “Ah!” he breathed, sitting up with his prize in his hands. She peered at him; he had a little vial of sweet oil she kept in their room, good for soothing Daniel’s skin if a rash was starting. She had used it quite a bit the first weeks she nursed the baby, to help with sore nipples, a parting strategem from Mrs. Ballard. She watched as Jed spilled the pale golden oil into his hands and rubbed them together. The light scent hung in the air.

“Don’t you want to turn the lamp down?” she asked.

“No, I want to see you. I want to be able to read your face, I don’t want to miss anything that will tell me how you do, if we are satisfying you,” he replied. “May I? You have only to say no, and I will stop.”

“Yes, Jedediah. Oh, please, yes,” she said, the second yes drawn out as he had begun licking and tasting her neck, pulling aside the loose nightdress. He pressed himself against her and put his hand under the muslin gown, upon her thigh. He drew it up further, then moved his hand to her soft belly, stroking across it while he kissed his way to her bared shoulder. Already, she felt more then earlier, to be able to see him and to know she was not hiding anything from him. She felt more and more present in her body. The rucked up nightdress started to bother her, so she pulled it over her head and lay down again.

Now, Jed set to his goal, giving her a roguish grin. He touched her breasts very gently and she whispered, “Just so, not too much or I think my milk will come in, it will make a mess.” She made a small grimace at the thought.

He said, “Of course, Molly, but I would not be distressed if it did, only that it would make you uncomfortable,” and moved his clever hands back to her belly. He shifted lower, hands warm on her thighs, one dipping to the hollow behind her knee, then back again to cup her buttock. The tension he was building within her was familiar but milder than she was used to. He looked up at her and she said, “Yes, it’s all right,” and he parted her legs. His hands felt warm and slick, tracing the crease between her thigh and labia, then in her curls, opening her again. She closed her eyes and felt the blood within her all seeming to stream increasingly faster to where he was touching her now, fingers slippery and subtle. He dipped lower and used his forefinger to stroke her quim, still very slowly, but again and again. She eased herself toward him, bringing him within her, just a bit and she felt she was wet from his touch, not as she had been before, but still she felt the desire he tended blooming.

She made a low sound, a familiar, happy sound and he paused just a moment before he moved his hands again. He nudged her legs further apart, then held one hand on her hip. With the other, he found her clitoris and she cried out, a sound without words. He slowed and said, “Molly?” and she found enough sense to call back, “Yes, please, Jed.” He kept touching her with those silken oiled fingers, first lightly and then more intently, and she heard herself crying out, soft little cries of pleasure and pleasure redoubled. All the while, he was murmuring to her, endearments and encouragement; he whispered in her ear, “The next time, I will use my mouth to bring you here, Molly, but I shall not use my cock until I can make it like this for you, so good for you.” She felt her climax come, a sensation new to her, less urgent than before but with a consuming deliciousness, the slide of it like the pour of hot water down her body as she bathed in the cool air of night. She felt pleasure at the newness, her own pleasure and his as he smiled so broadly at her; her body had changed so much but she thought she had not lost entirely the old ways of herself, but only found another beckoning avenue. She felt his mouth moving from her belly to her own, his hand at her waist, steadying her. She was aware of the milk on her skin, how he blotted it with the sheet, unconcerned. He came beside her then and took her in his arms and said, “There, lovely, I think we have made a start to it. Oh, Molly, there is nothing so beautiful to me as you when you come for me, my beautiful, beautiful girl. I love you so.”

“You have undone me, love,” she said, not weakly, but spent, contented. “But you have not--”

“I have had my pleasure in yours tonight, it is enough,” he said, bringing her close, the sweat on her mingling with the tracing of oil all along her skin. She felt all the edges of all the selves she had pieced together, the stitches so delicate and numerous, they disappeared. He had brought her that, so she turned and told him, “Love, you are so much more than enough to me, you are my everything—'To enter in these bonds, is to be free;/ Then where thy hand is set, thy seal shall be.'” He kissed her upon the forehead then and brushed back her wild curls, then turned down the lamp to let them sleep again til Daniel woke with the good morrow.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first true foray into writing sexually explicit fan fiction-- so I am feeling much more trepidatious about publishing that I usually would. I wanted to build on the changes Mary experienced in "Mother" and explore how she and Jed would resume their sexual relationship after the birth of their son-- their intimacy is important in and of itself, but also serves as a lens to view their changing selves. I did not tag Little Women, although I referenced both Marmee and Jo again, due to the content of this story-- I may edit the tags after seeing the reception in Mercy Street first :) 
> 
> Both Mary and Jed quote from John Donne (although Mary alters the lines a little to serve her purpose). I couldn't find much detailed information on the internet about postpartum care by midwives in the 19th century, so I did my best with Mrs. Ballard, perhaps a Boston cousin-descendent of the more famous Mrs. Ballard: 
> 
> Martha Moore Ballard (1735 – May 1812) was an American midwife and healer. Unusually for the time, Ballard kept a diary with thousands of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into frontier-women's lives.[2] Ballard was made famous by the publication of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812 by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1990.
> 
> Caroline Phinney and Dr. Jonathan Harris appear courtesy of the excellent emmadelosnardos's magnum opus "Not words..."


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